Sociocultural Level of Analysis: Social and Cultural Norms

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Sociocultural Level of Analysis Social and
Cultural Norms

• Crane 4.2

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Norms

• Rules on how to act
• Socially or culturally shared beliefs
• Behavioral
• Deviation brings sanction from society
• Formalized become law
• Most are informal
• Reinforced by need to belong

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Social Learning Theory

• Yahoo, we know this one pretty well
• Banduras theory (Bobo doll guy)
• Theoretically explains how norms are passed on
  within a society
• Observational learning
• Model watching and imitation
• Some are direct others are indirect

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Banduras 4 factors

• Attention
• Remember that most of what happens in our world
  we ignore
• Retention
• We must remember that which is observed
• Motor reproduction
• Must be able to replicate it
• Motivation
• Must want to demonstrate what we learned

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When are we Motivated to Repeat what we Learned

• Consistency
• If the model always acts that way, it is more
  impressive to us
• Identification with the model
• We mainly imitate people like us, in age, gender,
  looks, etc.
• Rewards/punishment
• Vicariously learn by seeing what the actor gets
  through the action
• Liking the model
• If we feel warm and friendly because the model
  shows us warmth and friendliness, we will imitate

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Banduras Bobo Doll Study

• Remind me what you know!
• Methodology
• Findings
• Critical Evaluation
• Ecological validity
• Brief, intentional frustration, singular
  exposure, may not be generalized learning
• Methodological flaws
• Models behaviors not standardized, matching of
  child types may have been erroneous
• Ethics
• Do they then go off to beat up their friends?
• Induced fear of adults?

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Applying SL Theory

• Does watching violent TV make kids more violent?
• Huesmann and Eron (1986)
• Longitudinal over 15 years
• Positive correlation between hours violent TV
  watched by elementary kids and level of
  aggression as teens, arrests, prosecutions
• Kimball and Zabrack (1986)
• Canadian study
• More aggression two years after TV came to town
• Correlation is not causation

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Refuting Studies

• St. Helena Study
• Mid Atlantic island
• TV comes in 1995
• Playground cameras set up
• 3 to 8 year olds
• Content analysis of shows showed little
  connection with violence levels on playground
• Same level of TV violence was noted in British
  TV, but kids became more violent in Britain and
  not St. Helena
• Sabido Method
• Produces radio and TV drama that aims to change
  human behavior (e.g., safer sex, greater respect
  for women, family planning

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Evaluation of SL Theory

• Explains passing on of behaviors in families and
  in societies
• Explains how learning can happen without trial
  and error
• A gap can exist between exposure and performance
  of task that was learned
• Some people never learn a behavior despite
  completing his 4 steps

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Social Influence Compliance

• Result of direct pressure to match behavior of
  the group
• Robert Cialdini
• 6 main techniques
• Authority
• Commitment
• Liking
• Reciprocity
• Scarcity
• Social proof

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Reciprocity

• Social norm that says treat others the way they
  treat us
• If someone in a store helps us, buy something
• Must repay someone who helps us
• What is given is not lost it will be returned
  in kind somewhere along the track
• Arousing of guilt can trigger this norm

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Other Techniques Based on Reciprocity

• Door-in-the-face technique
• Big request made assuming a turn down
• Smaller request made, and people feel compelled
  to go along
• Cialdini (1975)
• Will you volunteer to chaperone a group of kids
  on a field trip 83 refused
• A second time, as contrast, will you volunteer 2
  hr/week for 2 years to work with these kids
• When they said no, a smaller request, chaperoning
  a field trip was asked, and 50 said yes

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Real Life Examples

• Salespeople who lower prices when first price is
  deemed too high.

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Commitment

• Get people to commit, and they will feel the
  internal and interpersonal pressure to continue
  with their behavior
• Foot-in-the-door technique
• Commit for something small, then raise the bar
• Sign a petition first give a donation second
• Dickerson, et al. (1992)
• Dorm showers shorter is they first signed a
  poster that said take shorter showers I do and
  take a survey making them think about their
  shower time
• They were monitored they took shorter showers

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More on Commitment

• Low-balling
• Cialdini (1974)
• One group were asked to be part of a psych study
  that would begin at 7 am 24 came
• One group were asked to be part of a study, some
  volunteered, then they were told it would start
  at 7 am. 95 came, even though they had a chance
  to back out.

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More on Commitment

• Hazing
• Barred at most colleges after deaths
• Alcohol poisoning, exposure, burying themselves
• Happens in other cultures as rites of passage
• Happens in the military with humiliation and need
  to overcome difficulties
• Individual must join, and probably knows of
  initiation, must continually rationalize, sense
  of accomplishment
• It does also give greater group solidarity

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Does Hazing Work?

• Aronson and Mills (1959)
• Females asked to be part of sex discussion group
• Half initiated by having to go through really
  embarrassing ordeal the other half had no such
  ordeal
• Groups were designed to be really boring lots of
  boring confeds plus the participants
• Participants who were initiated liked the groups

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Does Hazing Work?

• Gerard and Mathewson (1966)
• Electric shock was applied during initiation
• Those shocked women liked their participation in
  boring groups more than their non-shocked
  counterparts
• Groups were seen as more interesting, intelligent
  and desirable

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Social Influence Conformity

• We know some of this
• Asch line study
• Conformity is behavior matching
• Could be extended to include thoughts, feelings,
  but most research is behavior
• Conformity may be ruled by social norms

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Asch Conformity cont

• Confederates used
• 18 trials with only some trials with misleading
  answers
• ¾ conformed at least once
• 32 conformed at least half the time
• 24 nonconformists
• Post-interviews self-doubt, knew the answer was
  wrong, need to belong

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Asch continued

• In replications,
• Group size
• In groups with 1,2,3 confeds, more confedsmore
  conform
• More than that, and they got suspicious
• Unanimity
• One other nonconformist makes conformity almost
  go away, even if visually impaired, even if Black
  and the participant is racist White
• Confidence
• Not so much conformity from engineers and doctors
• Self-esteem
• high s-e people not so conformist

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Criticism of Asch

• Artificial and lack ecological validity
• Asch counters with belief that dissenter here
  feels like an outsider, just as in society
• Demand characteristics maybe the task set up
  explains why you get such conformity.

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Other Asch Criticism

• Race and culture not considered all were White
  males in New Haven
• Ethics deception, anxiety, feel worse about
  themselves knowing how easily they conformed to
  wrong answers

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Minority Influence

• Moscovicis study
• 4 participants and 2 confeds
• Confeds identify blue-green as green each time
• 32 of parts do so at least once
• Even after confeds left study, wrong answers given

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Why do we see minority influence?

• Dissent means uncertainty and doubt
• Life must have alternatives, and these minority
  views are being stated consistently, these people
  must be committed.
• We see this in move for womens vote, civil
  rights, gay rights, tea party movement,
  environmentalism

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Is listening to the minority ever a good thing?

• Avoiding groupthink
• Unanimous
• No alternatives sought
• No dissent
• Optimistic outlook if beliefs followed
• Irving Janis

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Why conform?

• Deutsch and Gerard (1955)
• Pose informational social influence as possible
  reason
• To be right
• Social comparison led by cognitive dissonance
• I either do what they do, or I rationalize my own
  behavior
• Pose normative social influence as alternative
  reason
• To be liked by group
• Avoid social anxiety, rejection

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Cultural Aspects of Conformity

• Cant be broken into East-West, though Europeans
  and N. Am. average 25 and Easterners and South
  Am. Average 37 of conformists
• Americans more individual
• Some Europeans one way, some the other
• Some Westerners very conformist
• Meta-analysis by Smith and Bond (1993)
• 31 studies
• Conformity ranged from 14 (Belgians) to 58
  (Indian teachers in Fiji)
• Mean 31

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Cultural Aspects continued

• Explanations offered by Berry (1967) on his
  cross-cultural findings
• Economic explanation
• Crops require all citizens to help (the Temne in
  Sierra Leone for example)
• Cooperation a must
• Therefore these cultures would be conformists
• Those who hunt and gather on an individual basis
  would not need others so much and therefore these
  cultures may be more individualistic and less
  conformist (the Inuit in Alaska for example)

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Cultural Norms

• Surface culture may be visible
• What we eat
• What we wear
• Our ritual behaviors
• Deep culture is just as powerful in influencing
  people, but it is less visible
• Related to beliefs
• Related to attitudes of others and things
• Related to our values as a group

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Cultural Norms continued

• Kuschel (2004) recommends that we look for
  specific cultural factors that may be involved in
  any particular behaviors of interest
• Wars
• Initiation or other rites of passage
• Other specific behaviors such as infanticide in
  some societies and racial cleansing in others

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Cultural Norms continued

• Hofstede (2002)
• Uses cultural schemas as mental software
• They are internalized by a group of people
• They influence how we think, feel, and act
• Shared by the group
• Learned through daily interaction
• Learned from others in the group

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Cultural Norms continued

• Etic approaches to research
• Looks for similarities across cultures and
  between different peoples
• Looks to generalize how people are
• Assumes there is a universality at least within a
  society
• Emic approaches to research
• Focuses on a specific group as having a distinct
  culture
• Distinguishes rather than generalizes
• Focuses on differences

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Margaret Meads Coming of Age in Samoa

• Looked at three cultures
• Looks at the factor of gender roles and their
  development
• Arapesh people
• Males and females nonaggressive
• Feminine personalities
• Mundugamor people
• Males and females ruthless
• Masculine personalities
• Tchambuli people
• Females dominant and males more emotional and
  concerned about personal appearance

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Matsumotos Definition of Culture

• dynamic system of rules, explicit and implicit,
  established by groups in order to ensure their
  survival, involving attitudes, values, beliefs,
  norms, and behaviors
• Consider what makes up our cultural norms
• Drinking
• Sex/marriage
• Parenting
• Work

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Cultural Dimensions of Behavior

• Hofstede again
• One dimension is individualism vs. collectivism
• While hackneyed, this is a real dimensional
  distinction between cultures
• In collectivist societies, it is hard to tell
  where the individual leaves off and the society
  takes over
• Markus and Kitayama cite two proverbs which is
  which? You decide
• The squeaky wheel gets the grease
• The nail that stands out gets pounded down
• Another dimension is uncertainty avoidance vs.
  uncertainty tolerant
• Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the
  possibility of such situations by strict laws and
  rules, safety and security measures, and on the
  philosophical and religious level by a belief in
  absolute Truth there can only be one Truth and
  we have it. http//www.clearlycultural.com/geert-
  hofstede-cultural-dimensions/uncertainty-avoidance
  -index/

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Halls Proximic Theory

• Anthropological theory
• Time consciousness
• Monochronic v. polychronic cultures mono focus
  on one thing at a time and is overly concerned
  with promptness poly recognizes life for its
  complexity, and when interruptions happen, they
  are expected and dealt with, without a whole lot
  of grief over time lost.
• Based on personal space
• US has conversational personal space of about 4-7
  inches
• Much of Europe has an expected personal space of
  half that

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Critical Thinking Activities

• Discuss how the role of marriage might have
  different meanings in a collectivistic society
  and an individualistic one. How might culture
  affect the way we date, marry and raise a family?
  
• Some people may see Eastern cultures as more
  concerned about face saving than in Western
  cultures. How might you explain that difference?
  Acknowledge that this is not true of all members
  of those groups while you discuss the logic of
  the assumption. Ponder how face is saved in
  Western cultures.
• How would you feel if you traveled to a society
  where personal space was minimized and time
  consciousness was nonexistent?